Who is Karl Bushby? Inside the adventurer’s 36,000-mile journey across the world without motorized vehicles which took him 28 years, and his emotional return home

British adventurer Karl Bushby spent 28 years while he walked from southern Chile and now finally back to his hometown in England. The former paratrooper crossed four continents, faced dangerous conditions and dealt with visa problems for many years. On November 2, 2026, he finally returned to Hull and reunited in his mother’s arms, according to AP.

Bushby covered 36,000 miles across four continents and crossed frozen waters, deserts, jungles and mountains. But he has admitted that he is not a fan of walking. “It’s boring as hell,” he told The Guardian last month.

Who is Karl Bushby?

Bushby is a British adventurer and former paratrooper who set out to walk home from South America in 1998. According to the Associated Press, he walked 31,000 miles and covered 30 countries before he returned to Hull, England.


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Bushby called his journey the Goliath Expedition. He basically made two main rules for himself. The rules were that he would not use transport to move forward on his route, and he would not return home until he had completed the journey on foot.

He started his journey when he was 29 and left Punta Arenas, a city in southern Chile, on November 1, 1998. What he expected was that the trip would take about 12 years but took him 28 years.

How did Karl Bushby come up with the idea?

A birthday card from his father helped inspire the expedition, according to the AP. His father, Keith, mentioned a discussion among military colleagues about whether it was possible to walk from London to New York across the Bering land bridge, which connected Asia and North America when sea levels were lower.

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Bushby took the idea further. He planned a route from South America through the Americas, across the Bering Strait, and through Asia and Europe before reaching his home in England.

He began the trip with about $500 and a cart loaded with supplies. He called the cart “The Beast.” His goal was not simply to travel around the world, but to keep moving forward on foot without using vehicles, boats or planes to cover parts of the route.

The challenges behind Bushby’s walk

At first, he crossed the dangerous Darién Gap between Colombia and Panama and spent 18 days in jail. Because he entered a restricted border area, according to the Associated Press.

Five years later, he and American adventurer Dimitry Kieffer crossed the frozen Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia. The pair faced shifting ice and freezing water before being rescued from an ice floe.

Visa problems then slowed Bushby’s progress through Russia for years. To protest the denial, he walked from LA to the Russian Embassy in Washington, DC.

He later swam across the Caspian Sea in stages and crossed the English Channel in October 2026. After nearly three decades of challenges, multiple risk and long waits, Bushby finally reached home in Hull on November 2, 2026.

Then at last, the reunion with his mother, Angela, took place, and he met his granddaughter in person for the first time, according to The Guardian.